An Extravagant Exaggeration

hyperbole [pronunciation] n: extravagant exaggeration

I was thinking about exaggerations today [for a rather longish reason that you probably don't want to read about], and I started thinking about various levels of exaggerations. [As in, there're the exaggerations where people add billion to the ends of numbers, and the basic ones we learned in 5th grade (He is as tall as a skyscraper.), and so on.] After contemplating the subject for a while, I came up with what I consider to be the 3 basic levels of exaggerations:

1. Basic Exaggerations: This is just your regular, runofthemill exaggeration [hence, the boring name]. Generally associated with superlatives, similes, and metaphors. [worst, best, ugliest, always, never, etc.]

e.g. This library is the size of my closet. -- Unless you have an amazingly large closet, a library has about a 0.00243100942% chance of being the size of said closet. [And, yes, that was a carefully thought out precise number.] Andbutso, the library is being compared to your closet because of how apparently small the library is.

2. Over-Exaggerations: This is what I used to consider a hyperbole, until I looked in my dictionary. More on that later, though. It's pretty much just, well, over exaggerating something. I usually put normal number ones [about negative100 to positive100*] in this category [along with a few others that I can't think of right now].

e.g. I have, like,** 50 cats. -- Most likely, you don't really have 50 cats unless if you're one of those weirdo cat ladies that literally has 50 cats. And these 50 cats are their entire life. [If you are, please don't be offended. These ladies are generally very nice.] Because you probably aren't one of these cat ladies, you probably only have about 7-9 cats if you're exaggerating like this.

3. Ridiculous, Overthetop Exaggerations. [now, to me, alsoknownas. Hyperboles.] In light of this post, I looked up "hyperbole" in my lovely, bright green Webster's Dictionary dictionary, and got the answer shown at the top. "extravagant exaggeration." No lie, I literally want to meet the person who wrote this definition and shake their hand because of how beautifully that was put. Anyway, this is rather self explanatory. Like #2, I usually put numbers here. Unlike #2, this is where the extremes go. [Pretty much any number not in #2.*** Specifically numbers in the millions, billions, etc.]

e.g. You've said that, like,** 5 billion times. -- Again, there's a high chance that the person hasn't actually said the saying, phrase, story, etc. 5 billion times. Because, let's face it. That'd be ridiculous.

And with that, I shall close because I've currently not much else to say about exaggerations. Perhaps I'll come up with more some other time and make a part two, though.

-SilverLining

P.S. Let me know about your extravagant exaggerations and what you think about exaggerations and, well, anything and everything else relating to extravagant [or otherwise] exaggerating [or anything else, really].

*Note that these numbers can expand or contract depending on the subject and, perhaps, the actually number. This was just a rough frame.

**I promise I don't use "like" every other sentence. I used it for realisticness. If you're doubting this, think honestly. Would you put "like" in those sentences while exaggerating? If so, you see my point. If not, congratulations on being so superior.

***Again, note that #2's numbers can change.